Wednesday, March 16, 2005

So now, evidently, from acclaimed author Mark Levin (advertised on such worthy, mainstream, middle-of-the-road sources as NewsMax and WorldNetDaily) comes the assertion that Supreme Court Justices are overstepping their bounds to look to learn from other countries. Here's the key bit:

But it's become very, very popular now. It's also popular in Europe, where the justices go to vacation or relax during the summer, meeting with other justices. Sandra Day O'Connor has even written about this in her book. They talk about the need to look at other societies; we can learn from other societies.

They are not supposed to learn from other societies. They are supposed to apply the law, the Constitution of the United States. We'll leave it to the senators and the congressmen to learn from other societies.

Here, again, is that question of the immutability of the Constitution. If all these people have to do is sit there and apply the law, not to interpret it, then why do we need people at all? Why can't all the parties involved in a case get together, sit down with a copy, and conclude what must be so clearly written there?

Let's face it: it's clear that there are many different interpretations of at least some passages in the Constitution. That's clear from the fact that people disagree on it. But it just so happens that one of those views, the view of Levin and Justice Scalia, happens to preclude the possibility of the other views' correctness. That's something that my view doesn't do, personally. I allow for other possible interpretations of the Constitution, but I believe in my interpretation, and I believe that I can make a convincing argument for why I believe in it.

That doesn't matter to Levin and Scalia, because their view says that there's only one true interpretation, and that following any other interpretation is counter to the will of the Founding Fathers, and is indicative of our society's moral decline into judiciary relativism.

Let me write that last graf again, replacing and adding a few words.

That doesn't matter to Levin and Scalia, because their view says that there's only one true interpretation [of the Bible], and that following any other interpretation [of the Bible] is counter to the will of the Founding Fathers God, and is indicative of our society's moral decline into judiciary religious relativism.

Sound a little bit like Constitution worship? Deification of the Founding Fathers? I think so.